As Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments indicate, the role that the tendency to obey those in power plays in a person’s readiness to cause harm to someone is an extremely controversial research issue. Having watched The Experimenter directed by Almereyda (2015), I think that Milgram’s experiments cannot be justified despite the potential usefulness of the obtained results due to the huge stress that they caused to the participants. The movie demonstrates some attempts to break the participants’ will and exploit their trust in authorities, which can be deeply traumatic for some people. When the participants refused to go on in administering rather strong electric shocks to “learners,” they were aggressively convinced that they had no choice and that shocks would not cause serious bodily damages, just pain (Almereyda, 2015).
To continue on question one, in the scenes featuring the experiment, the participants tried hard to hide their anxiety and fear and understood that the entire situation was deeply wrong. The researchers could see the belief perseverance effect (the tendency to deny new information) disappear as the participants were becoming less and less able to convince themselves that everything was under control as promised (Almereyda, 2015; Coyle, n.d.b.). In the context of the participants’ emotional suffering and the feelings of helplessness and being lied to, the experiment does not seem to be justified, especially given that the results could not be fully applied to the Holocaust as intended.
As for question two, not all research questions are worth answering despite costs to the participants. To begin with, in controversial experiments, there are no guarantees that the research question will be answered accurately, and lab experiments’ poor generalizability is their well-known drawback (Coyle, n.d.a.). For instance, Milgram was willing to study the factors that could shed light on the motivations of the Holocaust executioners and conducted an experiment involving the risks of emotional breakdowns and severe stress in the participants (Almereyda, 2015). Despite the costs, it cannot be said that the results answer the intended question. For instance, Milgram couldn’t design an experiment in which “teachers” would be led by racism towards “learners” and know that their actions would have irreversible consequences. Another reason why not all research questions are worth answering is the unpredictability of outcomes. For instance, in studies of violence and human behaviors, some research subjects may suddenly realize that they enjoy inflicting pain on others. In such cases, it cannot be guaranteed that they will not decide to explore this feeling in other, totally inappropriate, and harmful ways.
Concerning the final question, the film has changed my perceptions and made me realize that conformity can take worrying forms and even become a weapon. It is because some scenes from The Experimenter demonstrate that the desire to conform outweighs people’s common sense even when they are sure that their behaviors are morally wrong or ignorant. In one scene, the implementation of Asch’s experimental procedure is demonstrated. The only true subject in the study notices that everyone has given a wrong answer when matching lines of different lengths but fails to state what he sees (Almereyda, 2015). Worse still, in the mentioned study, more than seventy percent of all participants decided to conform to the group of strangers (Coyle, n.d.c.). Also, in the scenes with Milgram’s experiments, the participants’ facial expressions indicate that they do not accept what is going on as normal, but the desire to conform and avoid disrupting the experiment motivates them to continue. I find these scenes scary when I realize that the same effect can influence anyone, be it policymakers or other people that are supposed to defend the truth and stay objective.
References
Almereyda, M. (Director). (2015). Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram story [Film]. Magnolia Pictures.
Coyle, M. (n.d.a). Lesson 3: Experimental research methods: Chapter 2 [PowerPoint slides].
Coyle, M. (n.d.b). Lesson 5: Social perception: Chapter 4 [PowerPoint slides].
Coyle, M. (n.d.c). Lesson 9: Conformity: Chapter 8 [PowerPoint slides].